My memoir begins: "When I was two years old I drowned." But fair warning: my book also has entire chapters in which I celebrate the works of George Gurdjieff, Tibetan Buddhism, the plays of Sophocles (especially Philoctetes, which anticipated our modern vision of individual freedom), the extraordinary “Time, Space, Knowledge” vision of Tarthang Tulku, fables (including dialogues between the industrious ant and the impetuous grasshopper), riddles and paradoxes (such as Zeno’s race between Achilles and a venerable tortoise which neither can win because of a rather odd way of looking at time), Dostoyevsky, Kafka (always Kafka), the four epic poems (but especially Paradise Lost), George Steiner (who saw the holocaust as evidence that the humanities can no longer be counted upon to humanize), Eckhart Tolle," Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (which has a single moment and a single word on which everything turns)—to name a few of the works, also listed in the bibliography, which have helped pull me toward the recognition that I am finally happy to be alive.